Waterlight
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Demyx avoids Roxas because he doesn't like to fight -- but the interplay between water and light is more complex than that. Demyx, Roxas. Gen.


Just watching Roxas made Demyx feel tired. Roxas fought, all the time—when not physically, then with his words or his silences. He worked his way through the Organization, trying himself against one and then another of them: testing the strength of two wickedly-spiked keyblades against six spears, or two chakrams, or one massive claymore. The others lined up for the chance to test their skills and their wits against the Key of Destiny.

Demyx lay low. Oathkeeper and Oblivion frightened him, he wasn't afraid to admit that. Those whose bodies ran on will rather than feeling were unusually tough, and he could shrug off abuses that would have maimed him in life, but keyblades were something else entirely. He couldn't shake the feeling that Roxas' blades could unlock him, and reveal that, behind the surface, he contained nothing. He watched the precise whirl of blades against Lexaeus' axe, the way Roxas deftly feinted and leapt to stay clear of the fiery arcs of Xigbar's arrows, but for himself, he kept his distance. He did not share Roxas' love of conflict.

But he couldn't avoid it forever.

Fourteen days after his arrival, Roxas finally cornered him on one of the balconies. The castle was full of them: sweeping arches of white (he had thought it marble at first, but it was too smooth, slightly warm to the touch, not quite real) that looked out over views containing nothing but indirect light. Views defined as views not because there was anything to see but because there was a place to look from. He spent a lot of time on them. He could not have said why.

He heard Roxas' footsteps but didn't turn until he heard Roxas' voice as well. "You."

"Me," he agreed, turning around.

"You've been avoiding me."

"Kind of. Yeah."

"You're afraid." It wasn't a taunt. From one of the others, it would have been; but Roxas didn't imitate emotion well enough to really taunt effectively. Instead, his voice was full of simple curiosity, backed with a cool blank stare.

"Yeah," Demyx said, and he thought Roxas smiled, just a little. (Wishful thinking.) "I don't like fighting. I don't like getting hurt. I don't like hurting people." Roxas continued to stare blankly. "So," Demyx went on, "I won't go looking for a reason to fight you, but if you make me, I'll fight back." Maybe—oh, maybe —

Oathkeeper and Oblivion materialized in a skirl of pale fire, as Demyx expected they would. Repressing a sigh, he drew his sitar from the nonplace where it lived when he didn't need it.

(_At first they had been baffled by it. "A musical instrument?" Vexen had said. "What earthly use is that?"_

_"Perhaps it has some unforeseen potential," Zexion had replied, but dubiously._

_It was Xigbar who figured it out, mostly by taking potshots at him until his powers manifested. Not enough to do damage, but enough to hurt—frustrated, in pain, he had struck an angry sequence of notes—and a wall of water appeared, slicing toward Xigbar. Another set of notes summoned a geyser, a third combined with the appropriate incantation manifested his first water-clones, and then Xigbar was laughing, drenched, shouting "Truce! Truce! God fucking damn, you're a mage, kid, not a warrior, that's why you've got an overgrown sitar."_)

Roxas came at him, fast and sudden and on the battlefield it was no consolation that Roxas was small—it just made him a very _efficient_ package of aggression and strength, barreling toward him with keyblades drawn and whirling. Demyx summoned a slick of water beneath his feet and slid out of the way. The blades whistled so close that he could feel the breeze of their passage.

No more of that; whether he liked fighting or not, it sure beat standing there and letting Roxas hit him in the head. He stretched his fingers over the strings and played a fast riff. The melancholy thrum of the sitar didn't trail off but grew louder, grew into the long rumble of water. A wave reared up between them. Through its translucent veil, he could see Roxas's keyblades crossed, breaking up the wall of water as it crashed over him.

He summoned a waterspout, but Roxas dodged it and came in around so fast Demyx couldn't get out of his way. Cold crushing pain exploded in his shoulder where Oathkeeper slammed into him, and he barely avoided a follow-up strike. His arm tingled from shoulder to wrist, but he hung on to his sitar and struck another riff of notes, hissed "Dance, water." With each note, a water clone materialized out of the puddles and descended on Roxas.

He would have liked to have seen what the clones did, or how Roxas responded, but he couldn't—he had to train all of his focus on the sitar, the vitality of his playing serving as the life-force that kept the clones moving. He heard Roxas' grunts of effort, the whistle of the keyblade, and the intermittent dropped-bucket splash a clone dissolving.

His attention focused down to a narrow band, concentrating on the strings of notes he needed to play. A wall of water here, a waterspout there; dodge before keyblades hit, then throw up a half-dozen clones to distract while he got away. He threw another wave between himself and Roxas, and Roxas cried out in incoherent frustration as his blade glanced off the pressure-force of the water. When the wave came down, Roxas fixed him with a glare that made his skin crackle, snarled, and flung both keyblades at him, one after another.

Demyx didn't have time to dodge, but one of the water-clones put itself directly in the path of Oathkeeper. The blade passed straight through it, but the turbulent water torqued its trajectory so that it spun off and hit a wall. No such luck with Oblivion, which slashed hot pain where it sank its toothed edge into Demyx's thigh, then skidded across the wet floor and spun to a stop. Demyx yelped, letting go of his sitar and clutching his thigh.

They stared at each other. Roxas, deadly though he was, looked for all the world like a wet kitten, and none too pleased about it. He gestured, and Oathkeeper and Oblivion vanished from the floor and materialized again in his hands.

"Oh, god," Demyx said. He felt suddenly exhausted, and his shoulder and thigh both ached. "Okay, okay. If you've got to kick my ass that badly, just come over here and get it over with."

Roxas stared at him, and then, to Demyx's shock, began to laugh. The keyblades vanished from his hands. He shook the water out of his hair, and said, "You really don't like it."

"No," Demyx said. "I really don't."

Roxas put his hands on his hips, and for a sudden he looked almost _normal_, with a puzzled expression that wouldn't have been out of place on a kid with a heart. It made the empty space in Demyx's chest contract painfully. "But you aren't _bad_ at it," he said.

"I manage," he said. "Look, there's a difference between liking something and being good at it." He gestured, and the water on the floor began to gather itself up into a sphere: first the size of a marble, but growing.

"Is there?" Roxas frowned, wringing water absently out of the corner of his robe. "Not for me."

"Well. Maybe not for you. You don't have a lot of memories to go on." He watched Roxas twist a sleeve, the water dribbling onto the floor. "I can dry you out, if you want."

"No," Roxas said, immediately prickling again. "I can handle it." He was going to be damp all day, like that, but Demyx didn't push the issue. After a moment, Roxas said, "I've figured it out. Water reflects."

Demyx tested his weight on his injured leg. "What?"

"Water reflects. Water reflects light. No wonder you're so frustrating to fight." Roxas' look was measuring, but . . . intrigued? "Axel must hate it."

Demyx shrugged. "Doesn't come up much. He can mostly get around me without needing to."

"And you don't _care_?"

"If he wants to think he's scoring points on me, that's okay. I can cope." The sphere of water was perhaps ten feet across; it wobbled slightly on the air, perfectly clear, rippling, distorting everything he could see through it. Demyx felt the weight of it on his mind for a moment, and then banished it. "You're not going to decide you need to beat the crap out of me now, are you?"

"I don't think so."

"There _are_ other ways to get to know someone besides hitting them over the head with your keyblade. We could . . . get something to drink or something, instead." Demyx realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that that could sound like a taunt. He hurried on. "—Something warm. It gets cold, once you're soaking. Word to the wise, avoid Vexen until you dry out. Hot chocolate, or something?"

The look Roxas gave him was almost pitying, but with a healthy dose of amusement to leaven it. "Coffee," he corrected. "Black. I think Xigbar has some."


End file.
